Contra Dance Links for the United States, Canada, and the World (original) (raw)

Sites and Pages

Schedules

*The Colorado link will bring you to Dancing on the Web. The Maine link will bring you to the Downeast Friends of the Folk Arts. The New Mexico link will bring you to the New Mexico Folk Music and Dance Society. The Utah link will bring you to Utah Contradance Information. These fine organizations and individuals already have complete listings for these states and there is no reason for me to duplicate their efforts.

**As far as I know, there are no regular dances or events in Mississippi, South Dakota or Wyoming, but I have created pages if something changes in the future.

COVID-19

As of January 1, 2021, the dance listings should be fairly up to date including whether dances are canceled although I am behind in keeping up to date with festivals, weekends, etc.. At this point, my assumption is that all dances and events are canceled unless they are virtual/on-line. Since we've entered the 2020-2021 "season" for many series and they never posted dates, information about evening/afternoon dances is getting "thin". Also note that some dance weekends, etc. are already postponing events from winter/spring of 2021 to similar dates in 2022.

In the meantime, some resources:

Country Dance and Song Society page on COVID-19
CDSS: Resources for freelancers
CDSS: Send love to freelancers
CDSS: On-line events
Dance Place: Dance in the Time of Corona
Andrew VanNorstrand: TL;DR - buy CDs because coronavirus!
The Carolina English Country Dancers have a list of Dance Pandemic Links

Looking for a caller?

Whether it is for a regular dance series, a one-time event, weekends and festivals, contras, English, squares (traditional or Modern Western), or Irish Ceilidhs, you can start your search on the list created by Luke Donforth that includes contact and other information. Are you a caller and want to be added to the list? Fill out the form.

Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS) Dance Map

The CDSS Dance Map, developed by Jacob LeGrone, is a crowd-sourced, interactive map of folk dancing (contra, English, square, Scottish, and other regular dance series) locations around the world. Find dance venues near your location, view upcoming events, and plan your travels. Organizers can add locations and information about regular dance series.

Try Contra and Dance Web Site Checklist

Jeff Kaufman has put together a web site/app Trycontra.com which, with a user entering a zip code, will provide links to nearby contra dances. In addition, based on the work he did in creating that web site, he developed a dance web site checklist with plenty of good advice as to what information to include. That same advice can be very helpful when sending out press releases, announcements, e-mails and Facebook postings.

Dancing Well: The Soldier Project

Dancing Well: The Soldier Project is a program to provide restorative community dance experiences to soldiers and veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI). Through a dance experience uniquely tailored to the needs of afflicted soldiers, veterans, and their families, these individuals will be able to benefit from the powerful healing, bonding, and socialization offered by traditional music and dance.

Why We Contra Dance

The Chattahoochee Country Dancers have produced a video called Why We Contra Dance which might explain to your non-contra dancing friends and family (and maybe even to fellow contra dancers) why we enjoy this activity so much.

If you are looking for contra dance information and cannot find it here, please e-mail me or check one of the other sites listed below as no one person keeps up with everything that is happening on the contradance scene.

Other Omnibus Sites

The New England Folk Festival Association provides an exhaustive list of contra links.
Ted Crane has been compiling a database of dances, musicians, and callers. Very extensive with information about future dances across the country.
Gregg Scragg's The Dance Gypsy has a long history as a print publication for dance information in New England and New York State along with a festival calendar, then the addition of a web site and now as a web site covering the United States and a multitude of types of dance.
Kiran Wagle's A Contradance Page is more than a simple page and includes links to a wide range of articles, groups, information, and dances and while it has not been updated in a while, remains worth visiting for the material that is not time or site sensitive. Change in URL (January 1, 2014)
And, of course, there is the Country Dance & Song Society (CDSS), which has plenty of information about contra dancing along with links and contact information for numerous dance groups.

Bands and callers are listed twice, once in the region in which they are based, the other in the "All Bands and Callers" page. Organizations are listed once, just in the region in which they are based (although if they have an activity in another region, they will be listed there also). The United States is divided into several different regions. The dance at Rehoboth, Massachusetts is the one I attend most often.

South Atlantic Florida | Georgia | North Carolina | South Carolina

Pacific Alaska | California | Hawaii | Oregon | Washington

http://www.contradancelinks.com

Produced by Charlie Seelig
This page last updated on December 7, 2020. Last update for the site was on January 1, 2021.